Evening News Ratings Race Heats Up

CBS’s evening newscast averaged more overall viewers on Wednesday and Thursday nights of last week, and in the news demo on Wednesday. Last time that happened it was September of ’06 and Katie Couric was in her first few weeks anchoring CBS’s newscast. CBS Evening News With Scott Pelley added nearly a million viewers compared to same week last year, closing its viewer deficit relative to ABC World News with Diane Sawyerby 900,000 viewers (500,000 compared to 1.4 million) year to year. CBS is very thankful.

ABC, however, still beat CBS’s for the week, had more viewers than same week last year, and, stepping back a bit, has narrowed its season margin with NBC in the news demo by double digits to its smallest gap in five years, and is delivering its most watched season in four years.

That said, NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams topped them both for the week – by nearly 1.6 million viewers over second placed ABC, which is NBC’s biggest advantage since Thanksgiving week of ’12. NBC’s newscast beat ABC’s by more than a million viewers every night of the week – and by 2.6 million on Wednesday night – marking the fifth consecutive week it’s topped ABC by more than 1 mil. NBC also noted its newscast is the only one to post year-to-year growth in the news demo, as well as overall audience.

When the dust settled, NBC’s newscast had logged 9.572 million viewers for the week – 2.4 mil in the demo, ahead of ABC (7.99 million, 2.04 million) and CBs (7.49 million, 1.81 million).